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Wednesday, October 12, 2022

Mike Hosking: The Government is shafting rural New Zealand


We have the sort of logic only the Prime Minister can use when she largely isn't on top of the subject she is talking about.

She tells us that farmers will benefit by leading the world once the Government's new "tax farmers more to save the world” scheme gets under way. Small news flash, we already lead the world.

It’s been a good trick. You create the problem, in this case farming emissions.

You then tell farmers you're going to tax them and farmers get upset. Farmers are lucky because they are the backbone economy so have political heft. So the Government pretends to acquiesce and say "okay no ETS for you, let's have a special plan, and you can tell us what it is."

Except it’s a con. What you want and what you get isn’t the same thing.

They pulled the same trick on Business New Zealand with Fair Pay Agreements.

Business New Zealand joined the group, made the submissions until, whoops, that’s no good count us out. But by that time it's too late.

Farmers wanted to set the levies for emissions, but guess who is going to do it now? The Climate Commission. Are the Climate Commission friends of the farmer? No, they are not. Are the Climate Commission climate zealots? Yes, they are.

Other problem, all this is based on modelling. Even James Shaw at the announcement admitted modelling isn't exact. Surely our experience through Covid proved that?

Even more problems, this has to be up by 2025. Will it be? No. Who says so? The Government. The architects of this mass tax thought bubble admit that the timing is tight. And this is a government that can't deliver pizza, far less a climate policy.

If that happens farmers will be folded into the ETS, the very thing they weren't being folded into from the start.

In really simple terms, we take the golden goose of the economy, charge it more, and theoretically save the world. It's a farce. As our costs go up, and we produce less, someone fills the gap, it's called market economics.

The Government doesn’t understand that bit and perhaps more dangerously, they don’t want to.

They don't like farmers or farming. They have been after them for the past five years and treat them like idiots and enviro-terrorists. The fact they are the best in the world never seems to have mattered.

If the Labour Party get a single vote out of rural New Zealand next year, I'll be astounded.

Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings

4 comments:

Ray S said...

I stand by the farmers 100% Nothing worse than getting screwed by the government.

All of this taxing of everything in the name of saving the planet might make some sense if it was demonstrated what difference it would make.

Nobody can do that so lets just tax it anyway.

I'm sure Luxon lost a few votes by announcing National would repeal the farming tax before the election, bad move, townies will jump on that an "cancel" him.

DeeM said...

The idiotic, ill-conceived and ideological policies keep on coming.
Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, our Labour-Greens government churns out another one.

At this rate, National-ACT will spend their whole first term reversing this crap. Maybe that's the plan. Then they can be accused of failing to fulfil their own policies.

Anonymous said...

It is rubbish to blame climate change on agriculture.
It discount the population explosion and will animals in the world. Cattle and sheep can only represent less than .01% of the world's breathing entities

Anonymous said...

how about we ask the pm to use all the confiscated firearms to shoot the required number of animals herself & the farmers promise to deliver the carcass to her doorstep!